Existence of God ~ Which is more rational ~ Atheism or Belief in God

to red molly Jesus was pieced with a spear to prove he was dead when he was crusified. Wibble and not a religious Zealot i pray God touch your soul because the way you discredit him he can send ur soul to hell but he is not a mean God he is loving so you have time to repent. Red molly i was a catholic myself all my life and i dont agree with almost everything about the church i served that church all my life until lasy year so i know so much about it. In the catholic its very hard to feel the moving presence of God but in say a pentecostal church you can feel it. Every church has their own way of serving God. Wibble i dont uinderstand you, you are trying to be funny but your jokes are pathetic, let me tell u doctors couldnt save my life for toffy infact there was no doctor on duty i could have died but God saved my life. You say others christians died yeah they did God had a time when everyones time is up so i guess my time wasnt up. Look We all have what we believe in if thats all what you believe i pray God touches adn changes your heart. There is nothing worse that gaining the whole world and loosing your soul because of your unbelief.
 
I'm afraid you are a religious zealot (i.e. religious with zeal) and I know you mean it nicely but I would be grateful if you wouldn't pray for me. I have no more fear of being sent to hell for no believing in JC/God than I have of being struck by a lightening bolt from Zeus or drowned in a milk overflow from the devout attending to Ganesh's needs.

I am not trying to be funny, just a little sarcastic/ironic whilst poking gentle fun at such ludicrous ideas.

And God didn't save your life irrespective of the presence of Doctors. If you recovered totally without the aid of doctors then your body saved itself. Not every sick person who goes untreated dies. It is just that the majority of seriously sick untreated people do die but they aren't around to remind us of the statistic.

If you now say that God created your body so he is responsible for saving you I am going to scream. Loudly.

And the "time is up" argument is gibberish. It reminds me of the Inshalla mentality I encountered in the middle east. If this is true you can drive however you like because you won't die unless it is God's will. It removes all responsibility for your own actions.

Nearly as big a load of gibberish as the "I believe there is something more" argument to try to avoid the point of proof. To paraphrase Jamie Whyte "What the religious really mean is that they believe there is something more than what we have any right to believe in."

And the peak piece of gibberish is the "We don't know everything so I can believe anything" argument. This must be the most muddle minded and illogical one of the lot. Then again the religious never fail to amaze me with the twists and turns of logic they can make to justify what they want to believe.
 
sorry if this has been said elsewhere in this thread, since i haven't read it (so i apologize in advance if i'm being repetitive), but the title of this thread is interesting in that it tries to reconcile religion with rationality. by definition, most religion are inherently irrational in so far as faith is only meaningful if it is faith in something you can't demonstrate exists. of course religion isn't rational - that's what it's for - for one to demonstrate faith in the irrational. yet people keep trying to find evidence of God's hand everywhere, whether it is scientific proof of the flood, evolution, Christ's burial cloth, etc. you're wasting your time. if there is indeed a Creator such as spoken about in one's religious text, He would not be leaving proof of His existence since it would undermine the entire point of faith.

dostoyevsky said all this a lot better than me in the famous inquisitor chapter of the brothers karamazov.
 
Red Molly

About Jesus on the crucifix...is it not possible that all the torture and pain he suffered prior to the actual raising of the crucifix with him on it, led to a quick death when raised on the crucifix? Is it probable that he would have lost quite a bit of his blood, combined with the pain, rendering him unconscious, perhaps slipping into a coma before succumbing to death as humans know it? Is it possible that he could have suffered internal bleeding which led to his death on the crucifix (or combination of the actual crucifying with prior torture)? Just a hypothetical, like you non-believers like to throw around at the believers.

Wibble,

I like to view non-believer posts in this thread, but when you ridicule and make sarcastic comments, it only makes you look an ass, which I could care less if you are or are not an ass. I know some posters sentences and writing can appear uneducated or irrational or plain ridiculous, but just take it easy on some. Making a mockery of most posts with stupid emoticons and cheapshot comments make you look, or dare I say taking the easy way out through mockery. Just have a basic or detailed response without being a prick. Is that possible with you?
 
I think I am being very gentle. And you may notice that I am poking gentle fun at the substance of the posts rather than attacking the English. And to be honest I find many posts in here hilarious. Or they would be if they were not so damn tragic. And I was totally genuine then I asked tokunbo not to pray for me. I find such suggestions intrusive, offensive and highly patronising (and deserving of minor retaliation).

If you are prepared to dicuss your views on a discussion web forum you can expect to have your statements examined. If I am taking the easy way out, and lets face it it is like shooting fish in a barrel sometimes, surely that is preferable to truly destroying the "arguments", which would not be pretty to behold.

The other side of the argument is that is is aparently fine for religious types to tell me I'm doomed, wrong, going to hell or whatever yet I'm not allowed to examine what is being said. Religious types set themselves up as having more intuition or finer sensibilities (as Jamie Whyte rather delicately puts it) than those of us who choose to be intellectually responsible. In most cases there isn't even an attempt to justify belief anymore (no matter how useless previous arguments were) but there is now mainly just an unsupported statement of belief and an offended response when anyone questions this. Reality is now irrelevant and simply a matter of habit or taste which it is apparently rude to comment upon.
 
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